awe, humility, hope and a few other things I might notice

Tag Archives: observer

Popular advice column, seen in a lobby at a southern Ontario truck stop

I have previously posted some of my photos from our trucking adventures but will try to add in a little story here and there. At first going along in the truck was a jaunt, then a pain in the butt from sitting for so long, a serviceful journey to help my husband get through his work day, sometimes a slog, and now perhaps a journal of what I see around the US in places I would otherwise probably never go. It always, well, almost always brings new sights, people and an evolution in our relationship as well. How could it be anything less when you are sitting next to someone for 12-14 hours a day, sleeping in a slightly larger than twin mattress and otherwise sharing in something akin to camping in a moving vehicle.

I don’t know if we belong to trucking culture, or if we are simply a segment off in the corner. Well, that’s me anyway, as a small billboard somewhere outside of Little Rock Arkansas told me recently, reading my mind and my heart at once-

“Observer”

That was the only word on the sign, posted for me; a job title, a life’s path, an accusation, or a statement of simple truth.

Like the gentleman who called out to me as I walked out of the shower hallway, through the driver’s lounge: “Feel better now” he said. I felt confronted and revealed in an uncomfortable way the moment he said it, a man sitting in a large room with 20 or more other men, me, a woman with a turban and a fresh face walking out from a shower, but I knew he meant it kindly. Yeah, I did feel better. And I feel better with a little time and observation that although the trucking pictures are far from great, they are shaken and tilted and have bug guts on the windows and reflections from the sun and metal, but these are what I see. So now I include the reflections, the mirrors of the truck, the corner with my own fingers wrapped around the camera. I want the viewer to know how I see it, imprecise, blurred, raw, messy sometimes and beautiful all the same.